Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-03-12
p,.n,,pr the vine.

EpIToR HERALD-As you take great
interest in viticulture, and as the season
of planting and grating is at hand the
results of an extended and costly ex-
perience may not be uninteresting TO
your reoders. I say "extended," be-
cause for five years I have lived in
VINEYARD, doing every kind OF work
planting, suckering, topping, sulphur
ing. cultivating, gathering and pruning.
saw .costly," because l made two
magnificent failures before l scored nay
frat moderate success. During my labor
carefully studied the nature and habits
of the vine.
The first thing to be considered in
planting vineyard is
A SUITABLE SOIL.
A heavy soil. with large portion OF
olay, rich loan or sand, with SUBJ
soil of clay or vegetable drift, is the
true home of raisin grapes, the Muscat
and sultana. Here they will yield
great crops of the very finest fruit. with
berries and clusters of enormous size.
Ten tons to the acre on six.ycar-o!d
vines, planted eight feet apart each way,
is not au uncommon crop. There is no
danger of couture or the dropping OF
the young berries, which is SO common
with Muscats on q soil of mixed sand
and gravel. They will not mature so
early on the rich lands as on
the gravelly soil, but If left
on the vines until by the scale they
show about "a per cent of sugar, they
are the perfection of raisin, distilling
and table grapes. This relates more
especially to Muscats. The writer has
had Sultanas that reached 33 per cent
of sugar. The experience of our best
cultivators, among whom may be men
toned DR.. Congdon. of Pasad ma, DR..
Stillman, of Lugonia, and Major Mer-
riam, of San Marcos, is that raisin
grapes will not continue to yield paying
crops on a soil composed mainly of sand
and gravel, or what the French call
Jraves.
Where the raisin grape will not
thrive, there is the true home of the
wine grape. That fine old gentleman,
d. B. Wilson, once said to the writer:
"Your wine must taste of the rock aud
not of the mud" The best wines in
the world are made in the Medoc, q
country as like that between Santa Mon.
lea and the Salt Works as one country
can be like another. The vineyards are
planted ON the east slopes of the sand
dunes to shelter them from the raw
winds of the Atlantic and are constantly
subjected to fogs and the chilling air of
the ocean, yet there are produced, in
soil of sand and gravel with slight
admixture of comminuted ocean shells,
vintages that surpass in excellence any
thing known, and command fabulous
prices in the markets OF the world. On
the palus or rich lands adjacent to
these, along the Gironde and Garonne,
wines greatly inferior are produced even
from the same kind Of grapes. Consul
Newmark in reporting upon the wines OF
Cote dor says that those of the noun
tain ana hillsides are vastly superior to
those of the adjacent plains. The
wines of the Cucamonga vineyard,
planted in soil largely made up
Of decomposed granite, have long had
o reputation for excellence enjoyed by
no other locality in Southern California.
A grape that, at Florence or Downey,
would yield an inferior wine, would at
Pasadena, San Gabriel or Azusa, make
very excellent one, while the former
places would greatly excel the latter in
the production of Muscats and Sultanas.
L. J. Rose in the Los Angeles Viticul.
tural Convention in 1883 said that he had
been buying Muscats for twenty years,
and that the best he had ever bought
came from about Downey, the largest
punches. the largest berries, and that
they had plenty of saccharine.
Where the orange thrives aud makes
the cleanest foliage and the fairest fruit,
the finest varieties of wine grapes may
safely be planted. Muscats and Sulta-
mas are gross feeders, require plenty OF
room, and are not particular about the
quality of their food, so the quantity be
ample. The choice wine grape is deli.
cate feeder, needing but slight nourish-
ment, but that must be of the best. 1t
will find congenial soil all along the
southern slopes of the Sierra Madre
from Pasadena to San Gorgonio. in few
spots in the Santa Ana valley, with
very large area in San Diego, Ventura
and San Bernardiuo counties. 1t is not
by any means certain that the eastern
slopes of the sand dunes between Santa
Monica and the Palos Verdes hills will
not be covered with vineyards Of the
best Bordeaux varieties. Soil, rather
than climate, seems to control in either
branch of viticulture.
B H. TweMBLY.
zFl IN 1907